Arenas
by Scarabbug
Summary: Spyro doesn’t enjoy his stay on board the Pirate’s Airborne Arena , but it’s not so much the fighting he has a problem with. It’s what he’s good at. Takes place mid Eternal Night. For Fanfic100.


**Really, I should know better than to try and write fanfiction while fluey. Takes place in the middle of the Spyro Game: **_**The Eternal Night**_**Hence the prompt connection.****Standard disclaimers apply. Reviews and concrit appreciated.**

* * *

_"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for."_-Ernest Hemmingway

_"What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog."_ -Dwight D. Eisenhower

Arenas.

Spyro didn't so much mind the fighting.

He fought, because there was nothing else he could do. Because there was no way out that didn't involve hurting more people than he wanted to hurt. Because he couldn't leave Moleyair and the others all alone up here (those poor Manweersmalls just can't seem to catch a break). Because he wanted to meet the Hunter of Avalar, who sent him that letter.

He minded the fact that he _had_ to fight in the first place. He minded the fact that everyone there was there for the exact same reasons (i.e. against their will, struggling for their own survival and nothing more). He minded the fact that every single person he, or anyone else, defeated ended up being thrown overboard from the prow of the ship like so much useless dead weight.

But he didn't mind the fighting itself.

They had more than one Arena, and more than a single battle going at a time, though most of the Pirates on board had begun flocking to Spyro's every time the weird bird-creature announced his name. Spyro could hear the other battles through the walls of the cell where they kept him in between his own battles. They were thin walls (thought still surprisingly resistant to pummelling, flaming and electricity bursts) and he heard people... talking. About him. About the purple dragon, the grand prize of the Ape King, with a bounty on his head, brought on board to fight to the death (and yeah – they used those exact words, too). It gave him the illusion, at least, of doing something useful and worthwhile. Everyone was talking, through the wooden walls and the bars of their cells. Everyone was imagining who and what he was –but they had no facts. No _proof_. Nobody had ever returned from a battle to tell of their experiences in the arena against him, and Moleyair could only carry so much information around unnoticed.

_'You got flair in them weird-__ol__' wings a' yours, dragon boy,'_ one of the birds had squawked at him after his second (or maybe his third, it was hard to tell, exactly, there were so many...) arena battle, and Spyro suspected that this was actually... kind of close to a compliment, though he didn't know exactly what it meant, and asking wouldn't have gotten him anywhere. So he just kept his mouth shut and fought as hard as he could, just like everyone else did.

The difference between him and everyone else, was that he always _won_. Always.

Sparx said he was getting cocky. Maybe he was right, but that didn't change the fact that they were both still alive. Even when the enemy was six times bigger than he was. Even when it has claws and fangs and cannons. They threw everything they had at him and he still won.

Spyro knew Sparx had hated every second of it. But then, he'd always hated the fighting, and there was nothing Spyro could do about that. He kept his older –_smaller, tiny, possible to squash by accident if he wasn't careful and in the life they had, sometimes there was no way of _being_ careful–..._ brother alive. That was the best he could do. It was the best he'd ever been able to do, even when they were small and living in the swamps where the worst thing they usually came up against was a Rabid Toadweed or a Swamp Rat.

Spyro fought. Spyro _killed_ things. He knew that. Even if it didn't happen right there in the Arena on the end of one of his Fury attacks, then the creatures he defeated were always tossed overboard afterwards, just as he would be if he ever lost. What good was something that couldn't win a fight and keep the viewing customers happily distracted from the growing discord all around them?

Spyro knows they have to get _out_, even if the Apes outside will be worse than anything the pirates stand him up against. Even if it means leaving behind Mole-Yair and the Manweersmalls (_not an __option,__ can't leave them, has to be another way..._), even if it meant more fighting.

In the first week or so, he considered the alternatives to staying. And there _were_ alternatives, but none of them were very good. Flaming and fighting his way out was an idea, but it might've meant Moleyair or some of his friend-slaves being hurt. It might've meant destroying people whose only real crime was to get in the way. And then there was Cynder. Except that they called her the "Former Queen of Conquer" now, and she'd been here longer than Spyro had, defeating everyone she fought. And Spyro's battle with her was to be the greatest ever waged in the skies.

Except that he would refuse to fight this time, because there was no way in Convexity he was going to do that to her again...

Which is why the Apes attacking the ship, the arrival of the Skurvywings and the monsters flying in from the air and the explosions was... kind of a blessing disguised as the End of the World. Because it made him act. It meant he could stop just fighting one creature after another without getting away except further and further across the sky. So Spyro did what he knew he was good at.

Spyro fought. Spyro fought to stay alive. Spyro fought to protect his brother. Spyro fought to keep Cynder. Spyro fought because destiny told him to.

And sometimes, he wasn't certain what it was he was fighting for exactly at all, but he was pretty sure a lot of people were betting money that he was going to win.

* * *


End file.
